You see, there are currently two rackmount appliances, several switches and some laptops whirling away in my my wife’s sun room. Last week they were accompanied by a couple of network security appliances, also. I work out of my house lab, so I need stuff to hook to my 20Mb/s FIOS line to justify the expense (besides the UFC pay-per-views.)

Each of these global warmers has what must be several hundred cooling fans, various buzzing thingys and 40 power supplies amongst them. They’re so neat to look at in the dark, casting eerie LED reflections onto the snow outside on my deck. Yet I digress.

But what are they doing here, you ask? Why are they in the Sun room?

That is exactly the question asked by my four year old. Daddy calmly answered "Well because they sound like the combined output of a swarm of angry bees and a Sikorsky dual-rotor helicopter and I sure as hell don’t want them in my office."

Puzzled, she toddled off to watch Dora the Explorer downstairs in the family room where the only thing resembling a computer is the Verizon FIOS STB with DVR. Ingrate.

I shall print this handy guide to edumacating my child-spores so that no longer shall I have to endure their petty little questions regarding the 20-node Beowulf cluster I’m building in the kitchen.

Wow. That book is something else. Supposedly it's part of a series that includes "Rover the dog says SYN/ACK!"
When you said "sun room", I thought for a minute that your wife had a room full of Sun equipment

She has her own Mac Mini with a 500 GB External drive that she shares with her two other sisters that have their Mac's, too.
I know it's not a *server* but I've got at least a year before she discovers that. Until then, it's Webkinz bliss.
/Hoff

As I read this, I couldn't decide whether I should be amused or horrified by this little booklet. The geekiness of it was monumentally funny, but it read to me like the text had been taken directly out of a "Propaganda 101" manual. To paraphrase "people will make fun of you, but it's only because they're jealous." Yeesh.
Martin